It all started small enough: On January 23, Michelle Schile showed up at her regular smoking rock to discover that it had been piled with a small arrangement of mud and manure.

Then, just to make clear that the offering wasn’t an accident, it was topped with an artfully placed sprig of fir.

“Now I understand smoking is a dirty habit, but someone felt it was their duty to send me a message in this way,” wrote Schile in a Facebook post describing the incident.

The first instance, photographed on January 23.Michelle Schile

An employee at the nearby Lochside Elementary School, Schile had spent 15 years taking her smoke breaks at the non-descript rock.

She chose the rock because it’s positioned behind a stand of trees that hides her habit from the children. It’s also one of the few places left in Victoria where it’s legal to smoke.

Smoking is banned in virtually all public places, including in parks, on bike trails and within seven metres of a doorway, window or air intake. Schile cannot smoke in her car, because it is parked on school property. The rock qualifies only because it’s along a multi-use trail that is technically still rated as a roadway — and Schile even took the time to confirm as much with municipal authorities.

An overhead view of Lochside Elementary School, with the approximate location of the rock indicated with a red dot.Google Maps

Nevertheless, Schile said it’s been as much as a twice-weekly phenomenon to encounter passing cyclists hurling abuse as they whiz by.

“Usually they’ll say ‘stop smoking!’ … and another guy, every time he went by he would cough really loudly and aggressively,” she told the National Post.

But the offering of manure was different — and it was only first blood in a campaign of pestering that would spiral into untold depths of obsession.

Another offering of mud was there the next day, followed later that week by a particularly large quantity of mud virtually burying the rock.

Each time Schile swept the rock clean, though, it would eventually be resupplied with filth, sometimes within a matter of hours.

Assorted garbage left on the rock on February 1.Michelle Schile

As the months progressed, the displays became ever-more elaborate, showing eerie levels of preparation. The vandal covered the rock in crab shells, the product of an apparently large seafood dinner.

The rock was stained with house paint, piled with horse manure, poured over with oil, smeared with bacon grease and strewn with random garbage from rotting cabbage to old milk cartons.

One time, though, the vandal was apparently short of ammunition so he simply took to spraying the rock with water.

“I’m disappointed in the lack of effort,” was Schile’s review, posted that evening to Facebook.

The vandal always managed to strike when there were no witnesses around to spot him. Schile attempted to photograph the vandal by installing a game camera . Each time she would review the footage, however, she would discover that the angle had been wrong. Ultimately, the camera’s SD card was stolen.

So far, the only certifiable image of the rock vandal is a grainy photo of his legs. He’s shown wearing running shoes, white shorts and yellow work gloves as he builds a new pile of unpleasantries.

Sean Mitchell, a parent of children at Lochside Elementary, also believes he has spotted the vandal in action.

He was standing on the school’s basketball court when, from a distance, his son spotted a cyclist pouring “quite a bit” of crab shells onto the rock.

An assortment of crab shells, left on May 22.Michelle Schile

“I’d say he was an older (40s/50s) male, travelling on a bicycle,” Mitchell told the National Post by email.

At the time he was not aware of Schile’s plight, only that “I just thought it was an incredibly strange thing to leave on a (seemingly) random rock on the trail.”

Schile believes she has met the vandal once. An older man who once stopped his book and asked her “why don’t you just smoke in your car and keep the cancer in your own family?”

There was also a mysterious commenter that appeared this week below a Saanich News story about Schile’s odyssey.

The only verifiable image of the rock vandal.Michelle Schile

“In the past, this smoker has left dozens of cigarette butts in the dirt at the side of the rock,” wrote a commenter by the name “James Grayson.”

“Not only has this woman been defacing and poluting (sic) the beauty of the Lochside Regional Trail, but she is setting an extremely bad example to all the students and parents of the school.”

While there was once a time when Schile discarded her butts on the ground, for two years she has been judiciously gathering them up in a portable ash tray. No cigarette butts would have been littering the ground for well before the rock-defacement began.

But the man left a more detailed manifesto on March 12. That was the day Schile left the vandal a note emblazoned only with the dictionary definitions of the words “passive aggressive” and “petty.”

“3 years looking after my wife die fighting cancer and our two kids sorry to see their mom pass no picnic not petty,” read the vandals’ reply, written in red marker on the paper’s reverse.

“So if you have a family who love you why not give them a chance to enjoy your life and retirement with you what a gift.”

The rock vandal’s manifesto, left on March 12.Michelle Schile

He also claimed to represent a “group” of 20 cyclists, of whom 6 had been killed by smoking-related illnesses.

Schile has contacted the Saanich Police, but investigators said the actions do not meet the standard for a criminal charge.

“In every case we investigate we look at all the available evidence to see if it supports the essential elements of the offense. In this case it did not meet the criteria,” Saanich Police spokesman Sgt. Jereme Leslie told the National Post.

Leslie did not get into specifics, but under the Criminal Code a charge of criminal harassment can only be laid if police have cause to determine that Schile has reason to fear for her safety.

However, the constant emptying of oil and other chemicals is almost certainly violating municipal bylaws against illegal dumping.

As the rock saga wore on, it began attracting the attention of other anonymous passersby.

One man apparently took the rock for a witches’ altar, and began bedecking it with religious iconography. On June 22, Schile stepped out to find the rock scrubbed clean and adorned with a makeshift cross reading “Jesus is Lord.”

A cross left at the rock in the mistaken belief that it was serving as an altar for witches.Michelle Schile

The rock soon became the site of a written war of words between the vandal and the Christian. The Christian left a cardboard sign reading “GOD IS LOVE!!!!” prompting a rebuttal sign reading “EVEN ADDICTED SMOKERS KEEP SMOKING AND SEE THEM SOONER!”

Another local, which Schile would take to calling her “ally,” began cleaning the rock and decorating it with paintings

At one point, Schile’s boss left a note on the rock imploring the man to stop scattering the area with toxic chemicals. “SMOKER YHEA SURE YOU REALLY CARE” read the vandal’s hastily scrawled response.

And so, six months after it began, the campaign continues. Most recently, it featured a dead snake folded into the shape of a heart.

House paint left on the rock on May 3.Michelle Schile

“Do I feel that my life is in danger? No,” said Schile. “He’s obviously a passive aggressive person, so I don’t really think he’s going to approach me.”

But it’s the mystery that bothers her most. On an average smoke break, up to 12 cyclists will pass by the rock.

“Every time one goes by I think ‘it could be any one of these people.’”

And it isn’t the only case of bike path vigilantism in Victoria. In June, someone described only as an “elderly male cyclist” pepper-sprayed a dog on another Victoria bike trail after an argument with the animals’ owner.

“There is a reason he did what he did and we don’t want to jump to conclusions,” the West Shore RCMP said in a statement.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has released its last budget before the fall federal election

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